I want to talk about innovations in environmental synthesis, reporting and governance and how these innovations apply to the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network in Australia. And I'll start by explaining a little bit about where I'm currently based at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. We are right on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, in the vicinity of Washington D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland.  We have a distributed campus, with two research facilities on Chesapeake Bay, one in the Appalachian Mountains and one in Baltimore's inner harbor, which is also on Chesapeake Bay.

We have also established a synthesis center in Annapolis, Maryland. The faculty of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science established the concept of the Integration and Application Network, based on the book "Scholarship Reconsidered" by Boyer. In this book, scholarship is redefined from the traditional research, teaching and service model to scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching. I find the integration and application aspects of scholarship the most interesting and challenging. So today, I would like to talk about some developments in the world of synthesis, some developments in the world of environmental reporting and science communication, and some examples of new models of governance, particularly, data-driven governance.

This blog post was created from a presentation by Bill Dennison to the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network in Melbourne, Australia on 29 Mar, 2011 (full powerpoint presentation can be accessed on IAN Press.